Well, I'm very glad to learn that you enjoyed your vacation as much as we did;>)

Looking forward to to pics/video and more stories.

Went to a small "For Pete's Sake" song circle that Dani pulled together at a local park. Most pleasant. Couldn't stay very long 'cuz had to fetch Sum Yung Sun from his Arnis class. It was just as well I had a good excuse to leave very soon after some one joined the gathering who was a former client - one major pitfall of being a practicing therapist in my own small town. We called Kendall and sang happy b-day to him before I left.

MOM, it seems Rapaire kept the money we gave him to buy the card and flowers - probably bought a round at the Legion Hovel with it. And I see LH let you go without brunch. It's bedtime now, but let me fetch you a bowl of mint-chocolate chip ice cream for your bedtime snack.

I'll try to assemble a raft of pix and bvideo clisp somewhere. We had a neat-o tiny Flip Video camera, which had a waterproof case, so I got some great shots of manta rays, sharks, barracuda and other denizens of the reef country/

Jaysus, you people are something wonderul. You took SUCH good care of Mom!! All my doubts were without merit. She's in terrific shape!! Even Rustic showed up!! I mean, I am so proud!

The house is another story. We shall have some discussions as soon as I finish tabulating the bills

Came back to two pounds of mail and a locked up house, late last night. Our planned means of entry--leaving the back door unlocked--was foiled. The whole house was locked. I had to jimmy a window to make entry. That done, we just crashed. I have to tell you, a full day of travel living on airplane colas and chewing gum is wearing n an old salt.

his was y first stop once consciousness re-asserted itself. Janie is psychicsch--she pegged the spring breezes, the brandy, the snorkelling and the sunburn.

We dove with a flock of manta rays so big and black they looked like flying black carpets or B-17s or something. We swam through walls of yellow jacks and school-master fish, the crowds so thick they looked like solid sheets of eyeballs and colored fins. We took a longboat twenty-five miles up the old Belize River, through the twisting jungle, to the ancient temples called Laminae, where the howler monkeys guard the comedy of lost religion and the creeper vines and palms make shadowed alleys under the towering pyramids of Mayan kings and jaguars. We read a thousand pages of cheap fiction. We SCUBA'd inside the Barrier Reef and drank ourselves silly with big-hearted Tennessee song writers and crafty international entrepreneurs.

I got featured at le local haute cuisine French Thai Fusion restaurant one night, my name illuminated on the multi-colored chalkboard outside in the sand, and snag all evening in exchange for a dinner fit for kings.

We slept and drank and tipped and wandered the beach. Drove into town in a gold cart over the rutted dirt trail that runs the length of the Cay.

The wind was a constant friend, day and night. For one thing, it kep all the skeeters away. Not one did we see, except in the jungle trails up the lagoon at Laminae.

And, to cap it all off, we talked to a couple of manatee on their morning lunch break. This was the capstone, because it was thirty years ago that a much younger moi sat down in front of a much younger BBW and asked if she would go diving for manatee. When she said "Yes", it was without any idea what a manatee was. But what she said yes to, which was something much larger than a diving trip, has endured thirty years, hence the grand vacances in celebration.

I am brown and a bit pink in places, but I am deeply happy with my vacation. I could live on Ambergris Cay. Dunno what I would do, there. I'd find something.

I read elsewhere, second-hand report, that Amos is approaching with his contribution. I haven't seen him, and there are no posts since May 2. MOM is getting a little worried that he might not get here. Conversely, she's been reading another thread at Mudcat and is also a little worried that he MIGHT get here. :-/

Pretty interesting story, actually. Egyptologists for quite some time assumed she must have been the personification of the evil stepmother to warrant Thutmose III ordering so many of her images chiseled away, and destroying so many of her monuments. Turns out, none of this happened until 20 years after her death. Anything that portrayed her as a queen was left alone. ONly those things representing her as pharaoh were destroyed. Speculation now is that Thutmose III found that necessary to reinforce his own line of succession, since he was not actually descended from any of the lines of pharaohs.

I understand why he did it. He was a sweet kid and l always loved him, though I couldn't abide his mother.

She was here in Fort Worth for a nice long visit a couple of years ago with some folks named Kimbell. Amazing how much they can show about someone who is barely actually there. They showed things from her period, and a few references to her, but only a couple of actual images of her (and those only escaped because the folks who came after her painted on a mustache and beard and thought no one would notice who it had been before.)

She wasn't. She was one nice lady and one hot chick. I remember once right after she took charge she decided that the pyramids were too...pointed...and she ordered...never mind. Just the reminiscences of my youth. I can tell you though, those diaphanous dresses she word...wooo!

Nope. The Great White Heron is a variant of the GBH. Same species - possibly now a subspecies though there is debate about that. They are much more commonly seen down in the Florida Keys that New York. I have seen the white variant very occasionally in North Carolina and West Virginia - but only very occasionally.

MOM, turn on that porch ceiling fan. It's so muggy out here you're liable to start growing lichens if you stay in one place for very long. Amos will be back soon, and if he DID go snorkeling without those brown swimming trunks, he might need a soft chair to pamper his sunburn. Let's put a few extra cushions on that old wicker armchair in the corner.